Today we saw the fruits of our labours the day before, as the first row of bricks began to go up on the foundations of the new kitchen.  Before we could lay them though, there was still more sand to be moved, although this time we had many eager helpers among the girls!

About 20 girls stayed home at Girls Village today as they had no school – their teachers were away for special training.  In between their chores, and playing with the babies, they pitched in with moving sand – although as the work got tougher they chose to just cheer us on.

Once the sand was moved, Megan and Andrea had to sift it through a screen to remove any stones and debris so it could be mixed into fine mortar.  Carolyn then learnt to lay the mortar in the first few rows of bricks to build a solid base for the rest of the walls.

The workers had also removed the old roof sheeting from the old kitchen, which had been heavily stained by cooking over an open fire.  They cleaned it down ready so that Meredith could begin whitewashing it.

The aim of the building project is to build a new kitchen extension to move the open fire for cooking outside the main kitchen building.  So in addition to building the extension, part of our job is to help clean, paint and renovate the old kitchen which will become a food preparation and storage area.

Once Megan and Andrea had sifted the sand, Andrea moved to help with the mortaring while Megan moved on to whitewashing the old roof.  For such a small kitchen, the number of roofing sheets seemed to keep multiplying every time we looked around!

After lunch we spent some more time with the kids and babies while waiting for the heat of the day to pass.  We have been incredibly lucky with the weather – quite warm but a cool breeze during the day to stop us overheating.

Then it was back for the final work push of the day – to finish a second coat of whitewash on all of the roofing sheets.  Paint was flying in every direction, and each of us received at least a first or second coat of paint as well – fortunately when we got back to the hotel it mostly seemed to wash off in the shower!

Tomorrow will be our last day of construction at Girls Village, before moving on to paint our new babies cottage on Friday.  The building crew at Girls Village have taken us to heart, with the engineer in charge telling us he had told his wife and sons all about us, and what a wonderful thing it was that we had done to come to India to help them.  He wants our autographs tomorrow, and all of the building crew have asked us to send them photos after we return home.